Kristina Fruge, Managing Director of CCV, writes about the importance of confession and humility when doing the work of being a public church.
A neighbor-oriented call
The work of the Riverside Innovation Hub has been guided by an orientation towards the neighbor. This is both an invitation to pay attention in the neighborhood and a plea to be open to disruption we might encounter outside the comforts of our familiar surroundings.
This neighbor-oriented way of living, when embodied by a Christian congregation, becomes a public church. As churches and as individuals, this call to be public, to encounter our neighbor, leads us into the public square. This is not a neutral place to be. It is filled with other humans, each with their own story, their own struggle, their own world view. It is shaped by systems and structures, which more often than not, have shaped conditions in the world that stray far from God’s intentions for creation. There is beauty and destruction. There are signs of life and threats to life. The public square holds potential and heartache.
Our neighborhoods have been shaped by violent and dishonest histories – ones that have regularly privileged some groups of people at the expense of others. Entering the public square challenges us to make a choice.
Will we show up and participate in the dominant and dominating histories still at play in our neighborhoods? Or will we show up to participate in an alternative way, a way that seeds peace, truth and healing? A way that requires confession and humility?
These questions take on a greater responsibility if you are someone who lives with any kind of privileged identity around race, gender, able-bodiedness, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status. These hierarchies, shaping our communities since long ago, continue to cause harm today. If we enter the public square ignorant of these harmful realities, we risk showing up in ways that perpetuate the lies and violence of our country’s past and present.
Deep roots of violence and deceit in the public square
Basic rules we teach our children – don’t lie and don’t hurt others – have had little influence in shaping our society. There is a contradiction embedded in the heart of our nation, the soul of our American church, and in the bodies of those of us here today who inherit this story.
Esteemed author and poet James Baldwin calls this contradiction our nation’s “fatal flaw.” As the founders shaped the values and aspirations around which this new nation would be built, they had an economic reality in direct conflict with their stated ideals. They owned slaves. In order to uphold their own thriving, they had to betray the principles and freedoms they claimed to be the pillars for building this new nation. They chose to withhold these freedoms from some for the benefit of others under the false premise that black bodies were inferior to white bodies. By three-fifths percent in fact.
In order to justify this contradiction, a nation, a church and a way of life was built around a very hurtful and deadly lie – that not all humans matter. The reverberation of that lie continues to echo through each generation and each failed attempt to uproot it.
So here we are in 2021, still hurting and lying to each other. We have yet to truly heed the instructions we expect our young children to follow because we refuse to fully confront the truth of white supremacy that is and has hurt, killed and denied human life and flourishing for centuries.
Baldwin, in an effort to confront the lie by speaking the truth, said this in 1968…
“I think that you and I might learn a great deal from each other if you can overcome the curtain of my color. This country is mine too. I paid as much for it as you. White means that you are European still and black means that I am African. We both know, we’ve been here too long. You can’t go back to Ireland or Poland or England and I can’t go back to Africa. And we will live here together or we will die here together. It is not I that am telling you. Time is telling you. And you will listen or you will perish.”
Confess the hurt, take humble steps
Baldwin’s words are no threat. They are the words of someone bearing witness to the reality of this fatal lie and pleading with us to face the truth. A truth where all lives matter and the need to demand that black lives matter is no longer necessary. A truth that demands the confession and reparative action of white people, institutions and systems. A truth that frees us to love others more and hurt others less. A truth that embodies what is at the heart of the Christian story and God’s vision for creation.
This truth both calls us into the public square, while urging us to enter with confessing hearts and humble steps. We need to be aware that our limited worldview and the blinders of privilege, require us to be open to learning and changing because of those around us. We are not called into the public square because the church has something the rest of the world needs. We are called into the public square and into relationships with our neighbors because we all are in need of transformation. God’s intentions for a mutually flourishing creation requires our participation, our confession and our humility.
And so we pray…
Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Change our hearts and minds.
Open us to truth, so we may confess the lie.
Make us humble, so we may repent the hurt.
Equip us for discomfort, so we may endure a new way.
Teach us love, so that your will may be done.
Amen.
Notes: The legacy of James Baldwin and his understanding of the human condition and race in America is explored by Eddie Glaude in his new book, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, and shared in excellent Throughline podcast, James Baldwin’s Fire.